06x06 - The Deep South

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Today is wild. We're gator gazing,

digging in the trash, and hunting

hurricanes. Major

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the sun is number one You might learn

something to tell someone

It's Dragonfly TV Dragonfly

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Hey there, we're pulling up to another

stop on our Dragonfly TV road trip.

I'm Eric, your friendly tour guide.

Please keep your hands inside the vehicle

until it comes to a complete stop. Thank

you and enjoy the ride.

Today we're at 33 degrees N,



How about some hints?This region is known

for its laid back hospitality, the cotton

industry, and the birth of the Blues.

Have you figured it out yet?I'm cruising

through the Deep South.

The Deep South is at the very bottom of

the American South. It usually includes

states like Mississippi, Louisiana,

Georgia, and Alabama. Later

on, we'll head over to the Mississippi

Museum of Natural Science. But now, we're

in Alabama's largest city, Birmingham.

Who's this guy?Meet Vulcan. He's the

world's largest cast iron statue.

Alabama is the birthplace of the civil

rights movement. It started in

Montgomery, Alabama, a little to the

south of here. Rosa Parks was an

African-American who refused to give up

her seat on the bus to a white passenger.

She was arrested. And it started a

year-long bus boycott headed by Reverend

Martin Luther King, Jr.

One Alabama stop you must make is the

Southern Environmental Center. It's one

of the greenest, most environmentally

friendly science centers in the country.

And Joshua and Sean are about to take out

the trash.

Hi, I'm Joshua. And I'm Sean. We

met in gym class a few years ago. And

we've been friends ever since. Hey, go

long.

We like sports, but we really like

science. We love learning

about everything from geology to

ecology. I've come up

with an invention. Aw, look, a

soda can. This should be in a recycling

bin instead of on the ground. Our science

teacher is really into recycling.

This is where the soda can belongs. Man,

we go through a lot of paper. Since the

only place in school we recycle is

science class, we started wondering how

important recycling really is. Our

science teacher, Miss Bucklad, told us

about a place in town where we might find

some answers. The Southern Environmental

Center in Birmingham teaches kids about

the three R's reduce, reuse

and recycle. This museum doesn't just

teach kids about trash. It was built with

it. The ceiling was made with steel from



from recycled plastic bottles.

There's more to this puzzle than just the

recycling. Can you feel the heat that's

coming off of it?Yeah. One exhibit showed

how much energy light bulbs use. I don't

really feel any heat coming off. Me

neither. If you'd think that since this

one was giving off more heat, less of its

energy is turning into light. Then we

learned how much water you can save in

the shower. It says that a low-flow

shower head can save as much as 30

gallons of water during one 10-minute

shower. The most shocking exhibit showed

how much our trash is increasing every

year. This is some sort of bar graph

comparing the decades of trash. Check out

the 70s compared to today. This increase

is just out of control. Two garbage

cans with a week's worth of trash showed

us what recycling can do. Man, that's

heavy. Let me try.

Oh, you're right, it is heavy. This one

is much lighter. The lighter can

represents what our waste could weigh. If

we try hard to reduce, reuse, and

recycle. Think about all the kids at our

school. What if we could all reduce?Just

think of the paper. We only recycle in

Mrs. Buck last class, right?Yeah. So how

much paper from school goes straight into

a garbage dump instead of a recycling

center?Hey, I just got an idea.

We went back to our school to find out

just how much trash we create. The

best way to do that is to check out the

dumpsters. We put on grubby

clothes, gloves, masks,

and goggles so we could get down and

dirty. Let's go dumpstegiving.

This praying mantis was made out of

recycled materials, including an old

car. What an awesome idea. If

you've ever reduced, reused, or recycled

art out of something that you normally

would have thrown away, send us a

picture. The

McQueen Science Center is another

highlight on our science road trip across

the Deep South. And did you know that

Huntsville, just to the north of here, is

the rocket capital of the world?That's

where they made the rockets that first

took people to the moon. And

Huntsville is the home of today's science

secret.

Huntsville has a very special floor.

It's located in a high security area of

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. But

what can make a floor so special?

We'll find out later. But first, let's

see what Sean and Joshua found in the

trash.

This is disgusting. It's a

good thing we have these masks out here.

Oh, it just smells. Look at this. This

has to be around six feet tall. Letters,

paper, more paper, all this

stuff that can be recycled. And it's not

even one third of what's in the dumpster.

What if, for one day, we collect all the

trash from some of the classrooms?Maybe

our samples from the classrooms could

show how much trash could be recycled

instead of throwing it in the dumpster.

We started by collecting all of the trash

from 10 classrooms. Reduce, we

use, recycle Reduce, we use, recycle

Reduce, we use We took the

trash to a place where we had plenty of

room to sort through it.

It's a magic number Our first

step was to weigh all the trash.

Okay, it looks about 14 pounds. I'll

write that down. Now we need to sort

it out. We have to put the same materials

with each other. Paper with paper, metal

with metal.

Look at all these soda cans. These should

all be recycled.

All this is just printed on one side. You

know what Miss Bucklot always says?Use

both sides of the paper. You gotta have

something. I think these kids made a good

choice on drinking out of this bottle,

because, I mean, if you drink out of a

juice box, you can't recycle that juice

box. But then it was a bad choice,

because these should be in a recycling

bin instead of a trash can.

Okay, so we've sorted the trash into five

different categories. Paper,

glass, plastic, metals,

and true trash. Trash that cannot be

recycled. The next step was to weigh each

of the five categories of trash. Glass.



about 1 LB. Classic.



OK, the paper weighs around 4 lbs. And

true trash. It looks like it weighs 2

pounds. To figure out what percent of the

garbage each category represented, we had

to do some math. I'll ask you a question.

Let's see what you can do. What

is the answer to 5 * 2?

After calculating the percentage of each

material, we made pie chart art.

This pie chart art is pretty

unbelievable. Of all the trash that we

collected, only 14% of it is true

trash. 86% of this could have been

recycled. Recycling is good and all, but

we really need to work on reducing all

this waste. We took another look at the

true trash we collected to see how we can

reduce it. Look, who would throw away

a perfectly sharpened pencil?I can use

it. Also, a paper clip

or a rubber band. We waste both

of these. We just throw them away. Looks

like we can definitely reduce the weight

of this true trash. Let's go. Hey,

wouldn't it be close to get our whole

school thinking about recycling,

reducing, and reusing?Definitely. We

already recycle in one classroom. Let's

start a school-wide program. But if we

recycle the school's trash, where would

it go?We made a visit to one of

Birmingham's recycling centers to find

out.

We met Mark, who runs the recycling

center.

This pile right here may look like a pile

of trash, but this is actually

recyclables from the city of Birmingham.

Aluminum is one of our resources that can

be recycled indefinitely. Look how many

there are. I know. Look at all these

different colors of all the cans. There's

probably hundreds and thousands of these.

This shows what recycling can do. It's a

lot of cardboard. How many times can

paper be recycled?Seven times before the

fibers get weak where they won't make a

good piece of paper anymore. Mark told us

the three most important things to

remember. We're starting a recycling

program. Reduce,

reuse, and

recycle. How about

that?

Now that's the definition of dirty

science. Thank you.

Here's another hint to our science

secret. The special floor in Huntsville

is used for NASA research with robots.

That's something I'd like to see. But

first, it's time to meet today's

scientist. She gets into her work,

literally. Let's meet Robbie, who's

trying to save the Deep South from

hurricanes.

Let's go.

Hi, I'm Robbie and I'm a weather

scientist for NASA.

My main job is here working with

information that we've collected about

hurricanes, and we try to sample as many

storms as we can. We did an experiment,

and what we wanted to do was study the

genesis or the birth of hurricanes, and

basically study how does a hurricane get

started, and why do some thunderstorms

spin up into hurricanes and why some

don't.

We go out and do a research experiment

where we actually take aircraft and fly

over hurricanes and through hurricanes,

and then also monitor them with the

satellites above. I have to admit, the

first time I flew through a hurricane, I

was pretty scared because I didn't know

what to expect. Hurricane

forecasting is really important because

it helps people prepare for what'scoming.

Satellites are important to the study of

weather because they can see the whole

Earth. They can't see things as clear a

detail as if you flew through a

hurricane, but they can see the whole

Earth. So they're really good at

monitoring everything that's happening

around it.

This is actually information that has

been collected by several satellites. And

what this is, is every single hurricane

in the season 2005. As the summer

goes on, the ocean temperature gets

hotter and the Gulf of Mexico is going to

get really, really warmer. As a hurricane

moves through, sometimes it churns up

cold water behind it, and that's the

force of the storm that's mixing the the

water from a deeper level. And that

affects the forecasting of a hurricane,

because if you have two storms that are

one right after the other, sometimes that

cold water. churned up by the first storm

will affect the intensity of the second

storm. When I was living in

Mississippi as a kid, Hurricane Camille

came through, and I was really impressed

with how much damage a hurricane could

do. And that really got me started on

wanting to be a weather scientist when I

grew up.

Our understanding of how hurricanes work

is like a jigsaw puzzle. So what we are,

as a research community, are trying to do

is trying to flesh out the pieces of that

puzzle so that we can see a more complete

picture of how a hurricane works to both

improve our understanding and to improve

the ways we want to predict how it's

going to behave.

Robbie became interested in the weather

as a kid. Her fascination as a kid turned

into onecoolest jobs around.

Maybe you're into weather or crime scene

investigation. Whatever the science it

is, try this as a quick practice.

Find the perfect recipe for

sandcastles. You'll need dry sand,

plastic cups, water, measuring

cups, and paper plates. Put one

cup of dry sand into each of the six

cups. Add no water to the first cup.

one tablespoon to the second cup, two

tablespoons to the third, and so on.

Stir each cup well. One by one,

flip each cup over and lift up the cup.

Does the sand keep its shape or tumble

down?

What amount of water worked best to mold

your sand?You can post your results and

check out what other kids are doing on

our website.

Surf on over to the Dragonfly TV website

at pbskidsgo.org. Stream

a cool DFTV video, play an awesome

game, or try a surprising do it. And

don't forget to tell us what you're doing

with science. We want to hear from you.

We're learning

about technology dissection and the

McLain Science Center. Technology and

dissection is important. You can take it

apart and see how it works on the inside.

What we have here is a disposable camera.

There you

go. Here's the front. I'm going to

take out the back. Nice little

lens. This spring attaches to

the shutter. Controls the amount of light

that gets into the film.

All of this stuff that I pulled out of

the camera, I would call it like the

guts, the parts, the insides.

He's taking off the front layer. It shows

you how many pictures you have left or

have taken. These are all the gears, how

it takes the picture.

A good reason to take things apart is to

learn more about it. I think that once

you take it apart and figure out how it

works, it's fun to try and put it back

together and see if you can make it work.

Did you know that Alabama grows tons of

peanuts?Alabama

scientist George Washington Carver

invented over 300 uses for peanuts.

including fuel, plastic, and lotion.

Now it's time to head over to the

Mississippi Museum of Natural Science,

where Caitlin and Blake are investigating

Alligator mississippiensis,

otherwise known as the American

alligator. See ya later, alligator.

Well, after a while, crocodile.

This is Beast, and this is Belle. This is

Izzy, Eeyore, Harry, and

Morris. That's Snickers. That's Caitlin,

and that's Lady. No, I'm

Caitlin. This is Snickers, and that's

Lady. Oh, yeah, and I'm Blake.

We usually like playing with my pets, but

today, I feel like playing with something

swampy. We like to hike at the swamp near

my house. Some of our friends think that

swamps are really scary.

We know that swamps are actually pretty

cool, and this one's right here in the

city. We're only two and a half miles

from Mississippi's state capitol.

Caitlin is a junior volunteer of the

Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.

It's good to have friends in the right

places. They lay

about three golf ball-sized eggs.

There's another whale. We call him Izzy.

Did you know that gopher tortoises are

endangered in, like, the whole country?

People think that forest fires are bad,

but these really help the habitat.

Whoo! Where's he at?Where'd he go?

Next, Kaitlyn brought me to the museum's

indoor swamp exhibit. Whoa.

Alligators and crocodiles are really

cool. You don't find any crocodiles here.

They're only native in Florida. Kaitlyn

told me that both crocodiles and

alligators are reptiles, but they're

different species, and there's a good way

to tell them apart. An alligator's mouth

is wide like a U, and a crocodile's mouth

is skinny like AV. You want to see more

alligators?Oh, yeah, totally. Come on,

let's go. Kaitlyn took me to the museum's

outdoor swamp exhibit. Where we expected

to see lots of Gators. HuhI

don't see any Gators. I asked Kaitlyn if

she knew why. Sometimes there are Gators

here, but sometimes there aren't. I

don't know. I'm not sure what makes one

place better than the other. Finally,

something you do not know about reptiles.

Very funny, Blake. We went back into the

museum to learn what kinds of things make

a good home for alligators. Alligators

are cold-blooded. That means they can't

make their own body heat. It says here

alligators dig into the mud riverbanks

for shelter. Oh, so mud is kind of like a

blanket. Yeah. It also says

here they bask in sunny spots to warm

their bodies to aid digestion. I didn't

know that. Hey, guess what?It's almost

feeding time. You want to go watch me eat?

Yeah. Feed me.

Feed me.

We watched the museum alligators eat

different kinds of fish. He's going for

it. Oh, he got it. We learned that

alligators are at the top of their food

chain. They eat animals like birds, fish,

and turtles. Big fish, birds, and turtles

eat smaller fish. The very smallest

fish eat tiny animals that can only be

seen with a microscope. They're called

microinvertebrates. Without the

microinvertebrates, the rest of the food

chain wouldn't have anything to eat. So

alligators need microinvertebrates as

much as the other animals in the food

chain. After understanding the importance

of the food chain and learning about the

things that make a good home for

alligators, we decided our next step was

to find some gators. We made a chart to

keep track of the number of gators we saw

and the other things we noticed about the

swamp. The biologists at the museum gave

us the equipment we would need and told

us about a great place just off the

Mississippi River called Australia

Island. We picked two different locations

on the island to observe alligators and

compare their environments. The first

location was a narrow channel cutting

through the island. The second location

was the wider part of the swamp on the

open water. We found a

tower at location one that gave us a

great view of the gators. Whoa! Look at

that long one right there. Oh, I see it.

Yeah, it has to be like 10 feet or

something. Wow, you see the sandbar?

Yeah, that alligator that's sitting on

the sandbar looks like he probably ate

something. Let me write that down. Yeah,

definitely. There's a lot of mud over

there. This environment is excellent for

alligators. We counted 12 alligators at

our first location. Man, I'm glad that

we're up here and the gators are down

there. Why don't we go look for a safe

place to take a water sampler?Collecting

a water sample was the last piece of data

we needed for location one. If we find

microinvertebrates in the sample,We'll

know that the food chain is healthy and

the Gators will have food to eat.

We saw ten more alligators around the

pier. We guess that was a sign that there

was plenty of food here.

Then we went to our second location where

the channel was wider.

I don't really see any alligators, do you?

No. It's really kind of strange too,

because we're only about a mile away from

where we last saw alligators. That's

going to be 0. But they

might be in the mud so they can get warm.

There's not really a lot of mud around

here. Do you see any

places so they can lay out and get warm?

I don't see any. I don't really think

that this is a good place 'cause there's

a lot of people here and there's probably

millions of boats going by and it's

probably scaring the alligators. And we

don't really know if there's any fish, so

we need to go take a water sample. Yeah,

let's go. Let's look for samples.

Then we went back to the museum to look

at our water samples under the

microscope. This

sample is from our first location, where

we saw all the gators. We saw lots

of microinvertebrates. Since they're at

the bottom of the food chain, this tells

us that location one should have plenty

of food for the alligators to eat. Now

let's check out the water from our second

location. There's really not

much moving around in here. We didn't see

any alligators at our second location,

and in the water sample, there are barely

any microinvertebrates. Without those,

fish, turtles and Gators aren't going to

live there. Let's look at our

research. In location one, we found 12

Gators, but then we went to the pier and

we found at least 10 more. And

on location two, we didn't find any.

It's kind of weird because in location

one we found fish. It

turned out that location 2 did not have

any food for the alligators. But location



or space for the alligators. And it

wasn't as quiet as location one. The

alligators were afraid of the people in

their boats. Our research tells us that

location one is better for alligators.

See you later, alligator. Man, I'm so

bummed that we didn't find any alligators

behind the museum. I know. I wonder where

they are. Well, maybe we need to

investigate more. Maybe take a water

sample. Maybe later, Gator. I've got to

go home and walk the lady. Oh, don't

forget about Izzy,

Zedong.

Blake and Caitlin found out that

alligators live where their lunch is.

That makes sense. Have you made any

sense out of our science secret?

I will take Science Secret for



is so special because it's more

blank than any other floor in the world.

Is it more bouncy, more

heavy, more flat, or

more bumpy?

That's right, folks. The Marshall Space

Flight Center has the flattest floor in

the world.

I'm standing here on the flattest

floor in the world. This floor is so

flat, it's like a giant air hockey table.

Take it, take it to the floor Take it,

take it to the floor Hi, I'm Kathryn, and

I'm an aerospace engineer at NASA

Marshall Space Flight Center, which is

housed around this 44 by



in the world. Smooth operator The three

layers that make up this floor is the

concrete padding as a foundation, the

plastic middle,Section and the epoxy

resin as the top layer.

The floor needs to be very flat

so we can simulate A gravitationalist

atmosphere. The way we simulate is to

have air lifting the vehicle off the

floor so it can just hover and you can

just. When vehicles dock in

outer space, they actually dock

at the rate of speed similar to what's

simulated in this laboratory.

And although our vehicle is over 2,000

pounds, from the push of a hand, it will

float across our floor. Ta-da!

The Marshall Space Flight Center does

tons of cool research. Currently,

Scientists there are helping to establish

a permanent base on the moon. Are there

science secrets where you live?Tell us,

so we know where to go next. Surf on over

to the Dragonfly TV website at

pbskidsgo.org. Tell us what you're

exploring in science museums where you

live. We want to hear from you. Want to

watch Dragonfly TV again?You can download

videos of everything you see on our show.

Coming up on Dragonfly TV GPS.

Pack your bags for next time on Dragonfly

TV GPS. Well,

it's that time. Time to ride on out of

here. Check back next time for another

ride of your life on Dragonfly TV.

My own police escort?That's a first.

See ya!

Major funding for Dragonfly TV is

provided by... The

National Science Foundation. Supporting

education and research across all fields

of science and engineering. The

National Science Foundation, where

discoveries begin.

PBS has been inspiring new ideas and

creativity for generations of bright

young minds. Arby's, proud sponsor of

Dragonfly TV and PBS.

that swamp, swamp,

swamp, swamp music